


A Conversation Long Overdue

by Starrik



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 05:10:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11395986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrik/pseuds/Starrik
Summary: An older, wiser Harry and Draco meet warily in the Leaky Cauldron to have a conversation that has been brewing between them since the day they first met.





	A Conversation Long Overdue

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't a typical, romantic Harry/Draco story, but something that might have happened between the post-canon Harry and Draco.

“Potter.”

“M- _Draco_ ,” Harry corrected himself, just in time. Years of habit were hard to break. Some people didn’t even try.

“Thought it was funny when I got your owl, so I thought I’d show just to spite you.”

He wondered if time and loss had actually failed to soften Draco, or if it was just his own instinctive reaction to seeing Harry.

“I’m glad you came Draco.” The white-haired man snorted in disbelief, before flicking his wand to have a piping hot cup of tea flying across the room into his hand. Not a drop spilled, which Harry supposed was typical. Like a Malfoy would spill anything on their ridiculously expensive clothing.

“I suppose they sent you to talk me into restoring the Malfoy support of the Ministry, then?”

“They didn’t need to. I’ve spent the last week in meetings trying to stop the Ministry from reopening the investigation into your family’s participation in the war. Everyone knows what Lucius did, what you were supposed to do, Draco. They’re that close from just taking it.”

A moment of indecision passed as Draco decided whether to be angry at Harry, as a representative of the Ministry which was trying to steal his inheritance from him, or simply surprised that Harry himself wasn’t the one trying to take his fortune away.

“Why would you do a thing like that? Try to stop them? Last I remembered, you hated me.”

“You can’t tell me you really believe that, not now.” Harry was inwardly incredulous. It had been his testimony alone that had kept the elder Malfoys from prison, he’d singlehandedly convinced the Wizengamot to approach the Malfoys with lenience. Harry Potter was no enemy to the Malfoys. He’d seen enough pain caused by that war, and he had no desire to see more.

“I guess not. We’re hardly old friends, though, you and I. Not since that very first day-“

“Madam Malkins.”

“Oh. I suppose I’d forgotten about that. You must have hated me then, the way I talked about your parents.”

 _Where are your parents?  
They’re dead  
Oh. They were _ our _kind, though, right?_

“You weren’t my favourite person,” Harry admitted. They’d been too different, the starved little boy who’d had nothing of his own until that letter arrived, in the hands of a giant; and a pampered, lonely, clever rich brat who thought he owned the world.

“Can’t say you chose wrong, in the end. Those Weasleys were made of stronger stuff than I’d ever expected.”

“If it hadn’t been for you, Draco, I might have ended up in Slytherin.”

Draco snickered softly at that. To think that if he hadn’t been the insufferable git that he was as an eleven year old, the entire world might have gone down in flames.

“I’m glad I got something right.”

Harry gently got the attention of a passing waitress, from whom he ordered a whole bottle of firewhiskey.

“I used to be obsessed with you, you know. Absolutely convinced that whenever something unusual was happening, it was you or Severus. I even thought you were the Heir.”

Draco barked out a laugh, his expression disbelieving.

“It was you, wasn’t it? And Weasley, that night when Crabbe and Goyle kept asking me if I was the Heir, even though I’d told them so many times… How did you do it, Polyjuice?” Harry nodded. “Of course, Granger must have figured it out. I can’t imagine how annoyed you were, finding out I had nothing to do with it.”

“Ron and Hermione stopped believing me when I said you were behind whatever was happening after that. Of course, eventually it _was_ you.”

A shadow fell across Draco’s face, the look of a man who knew that he would never escape the spectre of what he had done.

“You don’t know the first thing about obsessed, Potter. Harry. I was infatuated with you.”

Harry looked completely dumbstruck, like he’d never considered that Draco might feel that way about him. The two had been at each other’s throats for such a long time, anything else had been completely unthinkable.

“I didn’t realise that’s what it was at first, of course, but you don’t stay up all night making badges to smear the reputation of someone you merely _dislike_. I knew everything about you, I knew your timetable, I knew how long it had been since you were in detention, I knew you were after Cho Chang before even you did.”

The waitress returned with Harry’s firewhiskey, and he promptly cut his tea with it. Draco made a face at the strange combination, but when Harry placed the bottle on the coffee table between them, he followed suit.

“It wasn’t healthy, any idiot could see that. You were the golden boy, Dumbledore’s favourite, everyone’s hero. Even my father cared more about the Boy Who Lived than he did his son. I hated you, I really did, but I was obsessed with you as well. You were everything I wanted but couldn’t have, and everything I wanted to be but couldn’t.”

“I… I stalked you a few times, did you know that? I was so convinced that everything that was happening was because of you that I would sneak out and follow you around, hoping to catch you in the act of whatever you were doing. Everyone got sick of me constantly talking about you, coming up with theories about how you were doing it.”

A silence grew between them, unlike anything the two had ever shared before. A reflective quiet, something peaceful and soft.

“Things would have been different if you’d been a Slytherin, wouldn’t they?”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “Yeah I think they would.”

“Not better,” Draco quickly correctly.

“No. But different.”

Harry stared into the bottom of his teacup, wondering what omens of doom Sybil Trelawny would find in the dregs if she were there. Next time he went to Hogwarts he’d have to ask her to read them for him, for old time’s sake.

“They have me take lessons at the castle sometimes,” Harry said.

“You, a teacher? Now there’s something to laugh about.”

“Yeah, I can teach. Don’t you remember the time I spent half a year teaching our classmates Defence, because Umbridge wouldn’t?”

“I remember. And we caught you in the act, too, but Dumbledore swooped in and saved you, again. That stuff about it being his idea, that was all bullshit, wasn’t it?”

“Completely,” Harry laughed, remembering how angry Draco and the Inquisitorial Squad had been. “He probably knew we were doing it though. That man knew almost everything that happened in the castle before it happened.”

“I hated him more than I ever hated you,” Draco remarked.

“I had more reason to hate him than you ever did.”

Draco stared quizzically at Harry, trying to decipher the cryptic words, but soon gave up.

“Anyway,” said Harry, “they have me teach Defence sometimes. McGonagall doesn’t want them to grow up thinking of me as some kind of impossible legend. And every time that I get to teach the first year Slytherins, I always tell them this story. Because their parents would never tell them, and the teachers can’t imagine it. I tell them that Regulus Black, Slytherin, Death Eater, outsmarted and defied Voldemort, and Voldemort never even knew that he’d been betrayed. That Horace Slughorn, Slytherin, was the one who told me what Horcruxes were, and was the only reason I could find and destroy them. Andromeda Tonks, Slytherin, from House Black, fought with the Order of the Phoenix. Severus Snape sacrificed himself to try and bring down Voldemort, he risked his life as a double agent for more than ten years. And that Narcissa Malfoy saved my life for the love of her son, and with him the entire Wizarding World.”

At the last, Draco stood up and walked a couple of steps away from Harry, his face hidden. Harry couldn’t tell if he’d gone too far, Ginny was forever telling him that the speech he told the little Slytherins was too dramatic. She never saw their shining faces when the Boy Who Lived gave them heroes to hold on to, when the man who everyone said was the greatest Gryffindor alive told them that they could all be great, and good, _and_ Slytherin. He liked the speech. But maybe Draco agreed with Ginny.

“Why?” he breathed, so quietly that the slightest breeze could have snatched the question from Harry’s ears.

“When I put the Hat on my head, that first year, it told me Slytherin could make me great. And I told it that I wanted to go anywhere but Slytherin. Ambition doesn’t make you evil, neither does cunning. And no eleven year old deserves to feel like they’re any less because a half-alive hat told them that they belonged in the same house as He Who Must Not Be Named. If it weren’t for Voldemort, you and I know that the worst Dark Lord in history would have been a brilliant old Gryffindor.”

With tear-stained cheeks, Draco stared at Harry, not understanding how Harry possibly knew that.

“But you were always-“ Draco cut himself off, looked down at the ground for a moment, and shook his head. “You can tell them that you convinced me, Potter. The Malfoys won’t be leaving for greener pastures.”

As his old rival walked away, Harry couldn’t resist the joke that sprang to mind.

“That’s alright, everyone knows you’ve already found _green grass_.”

 


End file.
